


The Image on my Heart

by TiamatsChild



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Community: halfamoon, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Identity Issues, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 00:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur’s never been in love before. He wants to know everything about Anna, who she is and how she got to be that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Image on my Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mhari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhari/gifts).



> Written for the Impromptuthon at halfamoon at Livejournal off of mhari’s prompt: “Morgause, bad bargains”.

“What was your mother like?” Arthur asked one evening, as he lay sprawled across the end of Anna’s bed, fully respectable, except for the rumpled mass of his hair (which was, Anna thought fondly, not so different from its usual arrangement), and the slowly fading red mark on the curve of his jaw. 

Anna turned away from him, back to the accounts that she had spread out across her small worktable. She did not think she had been fast enough to hide the shape that shock and hurt always twisted her face into, when someone mentioned Igraine when she wasn’t expecting it. But she could not look at Arthur, however she answered, Arthur had Igraine’s hair and Igraine’s eyes. The long sweep of his nose was hers, the easy gentle openness of his smile was not but it might have been, if her mother’s life had been easier, if she had been a man, instead of a woman, and poise had been a slightly less vital tool for her survival. 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. “We could talk about the feast instead. Kay says that he’s not coming up with the decorating schemes for me, because he’s my steward not – well, I missed what he’s not because that’s when it all turned to grumbling and then Griflet came in and told us all about the ox, and you were there for that.” 

Anna spread her hand across the open leaf of one of the account books. She supposed it was a little flattering, that Lot was willing to give her the trust, though she’d never been to any of these estates, never seen for herself how they worked on anything more complex than paper. It was a little flattering, but it was not Lot’s flattery she wanted. “I was there for the ox,” she said. “You kept your head very well.”

“Do you really think so?” Arthur said, so breathless and excited that it sparked straight through Anna, and she had to twist, had to turn on her backless stool so that she could look at him, could see him lift himself up on his elbows and look back at her, eager and kind and beautiful and so, so hopeful for her good opinion. “I’ve always been good with animals, you know, it’s all the practice. It’s much easier to do things right when you know what’s right to begin with.” 

“Yes,” Anna told him, and smiled at him, slowly, so that he could see the approval spread across her face and sway her forward on the stool. “It is practice. You’ll be that good with people, some day. You’re already very good.” 

She loved the way he looked at her when she told him the truth about himself. It made her want to stand up, and go to him, and tilt back his head and kiss him until he forgot all the things he thought he couldn’t do. 

She didn’t, though. Instead, she stood up and went to the window. 

“I want to tell you about my mother,” she said, because she did. Arthur should know about his mother. He was so much like her. “It’s just that it’s hard. My mother was so good. Whenever I was sick or just afraid, if she came and sat with me, I would feel less frightened. She’d hold my hand, and tell me stories about her day – they were ordinary stories, just about running the household, or seeing a wild hawk, or maybe one of the fishermen would have brought her an interesting fish he’d caught. My mother liked strange things. But she’d talk to me. And the more she talked, the less scared I’d feel, until I wasn’t frightened at all anymore.” 

“She sounds like you,” Arthur said. 

Anna jerked a little straighter, a startled laugh welling up without her intent or permission. 

“I mean it,” Arthur said. “You always make me feel so safe.”

“She always made me feel safe,” Anna said. “But I don’t think she felt very safe herself. My father died when I was a child, and Mother had to marry again. She didn’t have many choices. Her second husband didn’t even let her wait a week. It was hurry, hurry, hurry, as if he was afraid of what she’d decide if he gave her any time. She couldn’t – There wasn’t any way for her to choose a good thing for herself, do you understand?” 

“Anna,” Arthur said, and his voice was so full of love and care and the endless compassion that was much of his nature that she could almost believe that he had always been there, all through her childhood and his, that he knew how scared she’d been, how lonely, that he hadn’t been one of the people Uther stole from her. She couldn’t help it. She spun about and went to him, so fast she was almost running, only not because there wasn’t enough room to get up to a run. He caught her, held her, didn’t pull her down but easily took her weight when she sank down onto his lap, her face in his hair. “I’m so sorry, Anna,” he said. “I hope you’ll always have good things to choose. I’ll do my best to make it so.” 

“I know you will,” she said. Arthur, dear Arthur, the only person Uther took she’d been able to get back. She held on tight, as if she could keep him close that way, even though she knew it would take far more than that. “I know you will, you dear, sweet boy. So,” she pulled back and kissed him soundly, leaned into him, “I’ll always choose you.”

“I’m your good thing for yourself?” he asked, eyes bright, mouth soft and smiling with pleasure and disbelief. Anna shifted her weight, leaned in further, pressed him gently back to the bed. 

“Yes,” she said, her elbows on his shoulders, boxing him in so that she could soak up the heat off of him, so that she could surround him, hold him, make sure he knew just how much she loved him. “For me. Always.”


End file.
